The Xocomil wind cuts up rough as we approach the town of Santiago Atitlán across a choppy Lake Atitlán. On a trip to central America, I am making a pilgrimage to the spot where, on 28 July 1981, the US missionary Fr Stanley Rother was martyred. I read a book by Fr Henri Nouwen about his story at the time that has stayed with me ever after.The backdrop was Guatemala’s civil war between a US-backed military dictatorship and leftist rebels that cost 200,000 lives before it was formally ended by a peace accord in 1996. Caught in the middle were the country’s indigenous Mayan Indian population, especially in the mountainous region around Lake Atitlán. The Government regarded the Mayans as second-class citizens and natural subversives. The rebels claimed to be